A year into the war, Russians in Georgia are viewed with suspicion

FILE PHOTO: Bookshop owner Nikolai Kireev, who recently relocated from Russia to Georgia, is seen through a window in Tbilisi, Georgia, February 14, 2023. REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze

On the first day of Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Nikolai Kireev sat with his three-year-old son and cried as he read the news.

"That evening I decided it was obvious we had to leave the country as soon as possible," Kireev, who is originally from Moscow, told Reuters in an interview in his new home in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where he has opened a bookshop aimed at Russian exiles.